


The Merchant of Death / How do you see me now?

by Violettavonviolet



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Edwin Jarvis, Dark Tony Stark, Don't Have to Know Canon, Gen, Genius Tony Stark, I Don't Even Know, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) is a Good Bro, Kinda, Merchant of Death, Merchant of Death Tony Stark, Personification of Death, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark kills, mysterious Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21647440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violettavonviolet/pseuds/Violettavonviolet
Summary: He had always been on the edge to darkness, never truly villainous but never truly heroic either.He had never told anyone that he was a hero, they just assumed it, and who was he to correct them. Just because nobody ever lived to tell the tale of his not so good deeds, didn’t mean they didn’t happen or that he was harmless.
Relationships: Edwin Jarvis & Tony Stark, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) & Tony Stark, Mistress Death & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Comments: 2
Kudos: 277





	The Merchant of Death / How do you see me now?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a new fanfic of mine, I hope you like it. This is supposed to be one of many that I'm going to post this month. I plan to do something for the holidays, but I don't know how it'll work out so bear with me, okay? thanks! Anyway hope you like this!

He had always been on the edge to darkness, never truly villainous but never truly heroic either.   
He had never told anyone that he was a hero, they just assumed it, and who was he to correct them. Just because nobody ever lived to tell the tale of his not so good deeds, didn’t mean they didn’t happen or that he was harmless. 

It started in his childhood he supposed.   
He had always been a bit … odd. Even as a small child, had had always had a dark aura around him, which was perhaps one of the reasons he seldom had friends. Even the maids were seemed to be afraid of him. Only Jarvis, dear good Jarvis, had supported Tony, who would be forever thankful for it. Jarvis had been the only thing making his childhood bearable. 

The first time he encountered death, he had been seven. At the time he had been kidnapped and built a simple explosive to free himself. It took the live of his Kidnapper and nearly his own, but on the edge of the land of dead a force stopped him. It held him in place, while somehow being both, corporal and not, and at the same time none of the above. It whispered to him, it was calling him merchant, his merchant nonetheless. It told him, that it wasn’t his time to come, that he would still have to wait and suddenly, he was back, laying on the ground between rubber and dirt the smell of burnt flesh in his nose. 

He got up, and walked out of the ruined house, to the next phone, first calling Jarvis and then the police. Afterwards they talked abut wonders, trying to explain how he could have escaped, adrenaline, outside help, anything and everything but believing that such a young boy could built a bomb strong enough to kill a human. He had to stay at the hospital for two whole weeks, before they let him go, still not being able to comprehend the act this young boy should have done, they let him go home to absent parents, scared maids, and the ever loving Jarvis. Later on, this experience would never let him go, he would go on to develop an obsession with death, and soon he started to invent new innovative ways to kill and to murder on a daily basis, to the pleasure and surprise of his father and to the worry of Jarvis. He soon created a mask, another Tony you could say, to please the masses and they hungrily accepted this new image of Tony Stark, an image that nobody looked too closely at, as Tony way just another young rich boy, with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. 

He was amused by their nickname for him, ‘the merchant of death,' how fitting of a name.   
Over the years there were a couple close calls, but he always lived on, and not once he met the being again. Until one fateful day in his mid thirties, he had been coming from a rather successful weapons presentation, when they started to shoot. And then, the bomb exploded, and he noticed right away, it was different from the other times. Sure enough, the being appeared again, still of questionable form but seemingly more corporal than the last time.   
“What do you want?“ Tony had asked, but he received no answer but a whisper in his ear “It’s not the time yet, it’s not you’r time to die.“ 

Those words still echoed in his head when he woke up, in the cave on a bench. He still heard them days later when they dunked his head into water, again and again. He needed to live, he hadn’t reached his end yet, they were often the only thing keeping him from giving up and dying.   
And they still rang when he wandered around the endless dunes, after finally escaping from the cave, they were still in his head when he was finally rescued, taken away from the hot sand and the winds. 

He made a decision then, until that point in time he had always believed that death was his destiny, but that change now, he would finally decipher between the innocent and the guilty, and he would stop taking the lives of innocent, and start taking he ones that were truly guilty.   
He was going to start with the Ten Rings and he wouldn’t stop until every last one of them was dead. And then he would start looking around for other crime organizations to take down, and to destroy. 

That decision still dictated his life today, which was also the reason he was in this rundown warehouse. He had destroyed one of the last branches of the ten rings still active today, and he was fairly happy about it. But of course, in that very moment the call to assemble rang and Tony sighed, he never got to celebrate his victories. As he was flying back he noticed that there was still blood on his armor and he smelled like smoke, he would have to change into another suit quickly… 

Which was the exact reason Tony wasn’t present right now, as the others had decided to start without him because it wasn’t something overly important after all?   
They had looked at a camera of a run down warehouse in New Jersey because there had been a suspicion that it was a Ten Rings Hideout.   
But now, they all sat there, opened mouths because, what they had seen was incredible, and entirely different from everything they had ever seen of Tony. They all started to question there knowledge about Tony, as this seemed completely out of character for Tony. But as they watched him sleigh his foes they all decided to not talk with him about it, they all had their own little secrets after all. 

And if any of them acted with more respect around Tony, that was purely accidental of course, and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they now knew just how powerful an angry Tony can be, if he so chooses.


End file.
